Now I lay me down not to sleep. I just get tangled in the sheets...

Yesterday, Thursday, was the first day of Anime Expo. There's also a Westercon over in the Las Vegas area, but I'm staying in town. (library_lynn says Our hotel is in Anaheim, it's very reasonable but the commute is long.)

animelosangeles has a booth in the back, right across from the snack bar. So that's good. We signed up too late to be in the list of exhibitors in the program book, but that's the way it goes. We have t-shirts from our last thee years for sale, plus some miscellaneous badge ribbons. (I explain to people that we're selling these, to raise money to cover the ones we give away at our convention. Plus having shiny pretty things out on a table gets people to slow down and take a look.)

Our newsletter is out -- divine_sage is the editor, and it's a beautiful piece. I thought the printers were going to use plain paper, but it's actually on slick paper so it looks very professional. We have one of the benches, so there's extra room for folks to sit and talk.

midnight_rocket was a tremendous help at the table, she spent most of the day as point person. Erica Wienke ("Lily Kalanoa"), Mikal Saltveit and squiptryx all helped out throughout the day, so there was usually a handful of people at the booth. I didn't once feel that I was trapped at the booth and couldn't get away. I was sleepy, because of staying up late the night before, but there were plenty of alert chipper people around me.

I've met Jim Vowles, Alice Volkmar, and Sean Chiochankitmun from Otakon; Tom Stidman (redneckotaku), from Anime USA; and Marc Perez, SPJA chairman (that is, chair of the board of directors of AX's parent organization). Esie Xethlex stopped by, in red this time -- I'm used to seeing her in black and white, with bats in her hair. Dani Coles, the lady we met at Anime Vegas that we gave a ride back to Orange County to, stopped by, it was nice to see her again.

In a few minutes we're heading back out. Look for us in booth 367, if you're going!

...I swim in sweat three inches deep. Just lay back and claim defeat...

Another day at Anime Expo. We were late getting out of the house, so it's a good thing Mikal Saltveit was on hand to open up in the morning. He'd already sold $3 worth of ribbons by the time we got there.

midnight_rocket has a Princess Tutu dress that she wore today. It's sort of like a hoop skirt with just the one hoop at the bottom hem. Good thing we didn't have a whole lot of stuff to haul with us this morning!

I forgot the funnel, again. (Gets up and finds it, puts it next to the door.) We have six gallon bottles of drinking water to refill our water bottles, but no way to do it without a big mess, so we've been using up the 16-oz. water bottles I carefully smuggled into the building. Tomorrow I'll bring in more bottles, somehow.

I don't remember meeting any new out-of-town anime convention smofs. But a lot of people have stopped by to say hello. I gave bryanw, our Artist Guest of Honor last year, the James Gurney portfolio that ala_mokita had entrusted to me for him, and he was suitably impressed. We found young summoner_lenne9 trappped in Artists' Alley. In fact, we have a lot of friends in Artists' Alley. I talked to rivetspoon, who agreed that we could tell people that our animelosangeles Artists' Alley info will be posted by the end of the month.

A couple people have asked about Kevin Lillard -- he's not attending AX, he's off at an unlimited hydroplane race in Indiana.

What else. We sold a surprisingly large number of ribbons, a modest number of memberships, and a depressingly small number of t-shirts. We're slashing the price of the t-shirts tomorrow, I don't want to carry them all home again on Sunday.

Inoue-san sent me some chocolates in the shape of little bears. If you stop by the booth and you mention them to me, I might be willing to share, while they last.

The snack bar nearest us has pizza, for $7. There are supposedly a bunch, maybe half a dozen, places to eat in the convention center. I've eaten at the two I can see from our booth - the Barbecue Teriyaki Smoothies stall, and the snack bar. Tonight we bought some rolls (a chocolate croissant and an onion-cheese kaiser roll) so I've got something to munch on during the day. Oh, and I should go get some of my beef jerky, if it's still in the car. Might be at work... but going to work means getting to bed an hour later than I would otherwise, so I'll just check in my truck and call it a night.

Plenty of cross-over people -- people who go to ConDor or Loscon, people who went to ALA last week (the library conference), and so forth.

We've had a few great volunteers. Alec Orrock wants to run our anime video program, and we're probably going to have an "Old School Day" theme to our Sunday which will allow him to show a bunch of his never-relased-on-DVD LaserDiscs. Gizmo's willing to do almost anything, we've assigned him to Ops as their Minion. Sianeka turned up, library_lynn grabbed her for Registration. He's VP at LASFS now, and reports that the LASFS meeting was practically a ghost town last night. All of the movers and shakers (and some of the twitchers and jigglers) are out at Westercon in Vegas if they're not here in L.A for AX. Gizmo had a carrying case with 30 lbs. of laptops and computer equipment in it --- he's carrying it around Anime Expo, as "training" for later in the month when he's down in San Diego at Comic-Con. Good luck with that...

Michelle Pincus is working at a t-shirt booth, so she just stopped by during her break. I think she's helping us in Reg as well. Rosie Duran-McKillip came by and reaffirmed that she'll help in the Con Suite. From a recruiting standpoint, I'm glad we're out here.

Margaret Mannatt, long-time ConDor dealer, is at the con and having a wonderful time. Selling interesting stuff, including books that you won't find at the other dealers and also other odds and ends. Doing well. I think she's really enjoying branching out beyond just selling Fine Books. We see her at Animé Los Angeles and Costume College too.

And Cal Cotton's here. He says "Hi" to everyone as well.

Lots of guys wandering around in their underwear. Okay, I've seen fewer than ten in the first two days, but that's still plenty. "Codpiece Boy" seems to be a good nickname to keep around for the next person who it matches...

Anime Expo has finally hired shuttle buses. They pretty much had to, because their official hotels are so spread out -- the Westin Bonaventure, for example, is a mile and a half away. This move already has been met with praise from many fans. They sure could have used it last year, when there was such a long hike from Video Room 1 to Video Room 2. (A hotel immediately to the north of the LBCC vs. the Hyatt, immed. south.)

Tomorrow's the Anime Convention Mailing List meet-up. Sort of like the anime equivalent of SMOFS. We're going to Corner Bakery, which is about 4 blocks northish of the LACC. That's the closest realistic place we could meet without spending a fortune or overwhelming a restaurant with a small dining room (or both).

rebecca817 sent me and Lynn shirts. They seem to fit. (Will we get matching headbands too?) Thank you! We'll wear them on Sunday.